Lesley Keating

RICK JACKSON: Girl power rules – at the age of two

A little mystery and untouchability is what helps to create true stars.

A friend sent me a link to an online video about Audrey Hepburn today and I was absolutely entranced at the images. She was so elegant, beautiful, graceful and timeless.

Not only was she beautiful but she was also a genuinely gracious and humanitarian lady. To see footage of her sparkling from the screen in various roles, from Eliza in My Fair Lady to the iconic Holly Golightly, was a real treat. It doesn’t matter that she wasn’t what you’d call a ‘serious’ gritty actress portraying seminal characters in life-changing movies; she was special, with an essence that emanated from the screen, as did several others from the past, like Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Sophia Loren.

Audrey and friends were definitely sexy and glamorous, yet they understood the elements of true glamour included restraint and ‘less is more’.

They didn’t feel the need to shove their cleavage or backside into every picture for extra column inches. They didn’t need to be photographed falling out of nightclubs with their knickers on display and they didn’t need to look as fake as a plastic doll to be considered gorgeous.

Interestingly, their agents were paid to protect, not expose, every detail of their personal lives. And I’m pretty sure they didn’t pose with a pout that would put a puffer fish to shame either. Yet they were definitely the celebrities of their era, glowing, golden and mysterious, radiating an almost celestial glamour.

Fast forward 50 years and the culture of reality celebrity. Many of today’s reality ‘celebrities’ sadly have the distinction of being famous only through accessibility or by association, not for their talents in any field.

They only have to belch and the world knows all about it. Their fans copy virtually every element of their lifestyles.

They’re so accessible they are yawningly commonplace now. A legion of add-water-and-stir so-called stars who haven’t so much as lost that ‘golden touch’, they never actually had it in the first place!

A little mystery and untouchability is what helps to create true stars. Kardashian wannabes and orange faced, felt-pen browed, acrylic-clawed babes, take note.